First Book

The snow is melting and according to the calendar spring is upon us. I don't know about other writers, but there is something about the spring that makes me write more. At night the ideas and lines creep into my mind and take over my thoughts. In reflection of past springs, I remembered the first book I had ever asked for as a child.

I must have only been four years old, and it was late spring or perhaps early summer, and my mother had brought me to The Toadstool Bookshop. I stopped off at a table because a book had caught my eye. There was a brown horse on the cover, and the book was titled The Wild Horses of Sable Island. My mother indulged my new fascination with horses and bought the book for me, which told the story of a wild stallion as he struggled to survive and form his own band on the Sable Island.

What everybody thought was a passing childish interest became a passion and that book fed my passion. Unable to access real horses, I became obsessed with horse stories and soon I had books such as The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar, Seastar: Orphan of Chincoteague and Brighty of the Grand Canyon. Christmas and birthdays I requested more books and toys with horses. I found reading and writing as my only link to horses since my parents did not have the money for riding lessons and my mother did not know horsey people.

Fast forward 18 or so years and I now have my own horse and I write about horses in novels, poems and short stories. Yes, I have greatly expanded my reading subjects, but nothing is still better than a well-written novel capturing the magic of the horse to me be it "realistic fiction" or a high fantasy novel. 

My life has been molded by the story of the horse. By the way, I still have the book The Wild Horses of Sable Island tucked safely away in a drawer. Perhaps, someday, I will read it to my own child.